It's been a little while, hasn't it blog? Well, I've been busy, and I'm still waiting on the extra RAM I ordered to make my beautiful Dell run at a halfway decent speed (1gb with Vista, are they joking?).
In this time, though, I have been watching an awful lot of good TV. Today I shall mostly be spoiling for Supernatural, up to and including episode 18 of season 4. Consider that fair warning.
Supernatural is by far the best genre TV show currently in production. It may well be the best TV show on air full stop. I just can't fault it. Okay that's not entirely true, I can fault on it's epic white male bias (women and characters of colour are mainly evil or they die. Fail, SPN, epic fail) but for storytelling this show is top. And each series just keeps getting better!
Season four has been spectacular so far. From the opening revelation that angels exist in the SPNverse, to the latest episode in which we discover the existence of prophets that receive the word of God, the show keeps coming up with exciting new moments where it could potentially jump the shark. But it doesn't. The writers make it work! And they do it by never forgetting that essentially their show is about two brothers with enormously depressing and fucked-up lives.
As funny as the "our lives are books, and there are Supernatural fans, and they slash us" opening was, I was a teensy bit scared that they weren't going to make it work in the context of the show. How was this going to be explained in a cheese-free way? In the end, I absolutely LOVED the prophets angle. The show considered how difficult it would be to live your life with too much knowledge about your destiny, and finally went to a really dark place with Chuck deciding to kill himself rather than be a helpless observer of the Winchesters' (apparently not so cheery) fate, only to be told by the increasingly creepy Zachariah that he had no choice.
Despite this doom and gloom, Supernatural always brings the comedy and this episode had more than most. I have to say, I loved the "I'm the Prophet Chuck!" line, and "M Night level of douchiness" as well as the Winchesters discovering the existence of slash fiction about themselves.
In fact the postmodern nod to fandom was quite touching really. Kripke keeps an eye on his fans, obviously, and validates them with a lovable piss-taking on screen. Compare this to the hatred of fanfiction you get from the likes of Anne Rice. Yeah, Kripke loves us. Also, commenting on the terrible writing of episodes like Bugs? Genius. And true. We've come a long way since those days, thankfully!
Castiel had an interesting role in the episode too, developing his relationship with Dean and seemingly showing more disobedience than he ever has before.
Some minor plot niggles. If Lilith wants to stop bringing about the apocalypse because she knows she won't survive it, why would she decide to make a deal with the Winchesters? Surely that's not much of a deal if it's something she actually WANTS to do anyway? So now she got turned down, does she intend to sacrifice herself to free Lucifer to spite the boys? Makes no sense.
I'm loving this season so much! I can't wait to see what the horrific prophecy Chuck had will be. I heart the Winchesters, and I heart watching them suffer, in a really sadistic way. I agree with the publisher lady, it's always best when they're crying.
